5 Hidden Gems Are Riding Aboard NASA's Perseverance Rover
The symbols, mottos, and small objects added to the agency's newest Mars rover serve a variety of purposes, from functional to decorative.
More than halfway
to the Red Planet, NASA's Perseverance Mars rover isn't just shuttling
sophisticated science instruments and tubes to be filled with Earth-bound rock
samples. It's carrying symbols, mottos, and objects that range from practical
to playful - everything from meteorite fragments to chips carrying the names of
10.9 million people.
The "extras" are part of a tradition that harks
back to the early space age and is now called "festooning" in NASA
lingo. A plaque
aboard Pioneer 10 and 11 displays a man and a woman for distant spacefarers
who might find the spacecraft. The Golden Record aboard
Voyager 1 and 2 serves a similar purpose. Metal from the
wreckage of the Twin Towers on 9/11 was installed on the rovers Opportunity
and Spirit, while Spirit also carried a memorial to the crew of
Space Shuttle Columbia.
"These kinds of
embellishments add artistic elements on missions that are otherwise solely
dominated by science and technology, as well as lasting tributes to colleagues
who have helped pave the way for humanity's exploration of space," said
Jim Bell of Arizona State University, who has helped festoon almost all of
NASA's Mars rovers, including Perseverance. Bell is the principal investigator
of Perseverance's Mastcam-Z,
a pair of zoomable cameras that will capture gorgeous color panoramas of the
Martian surface.
The 1909
penny aboard the Curiosity rover nods not just to the hundredth anniversary
of the Lincoln penny, but also to how geologists often include a penny for
scale when analyzing images of rock features. In fact, the object serves a similar
purpose on Curiosity: Scientists use it as a calibration
target - a kind of default they can use to check the settings of the Mars
Hand Lens Imager camera. Because cameras frequently take images of these
targets, they're the ideal places to add a motto or decorative symbols for
viewing by the public.
As with Curiosity, Perseverance was built at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. Much of
the festooning aboard the rover serves a dual purpose. Here are some prime
examples.
Mastcam-Z Made You
Look
Scientists use the color swatches on the primary calibration target for Mastcam-Z - a pair of zoomable cameras aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover - to fine-tune the cameras' settings. Symbols and mottos relevant to the mission are included around the target's perimeter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS/U of Copenhagen
› Full image and caption
Serving as Perseverance's main "eyes," Mastcam-Z
is the latest in a line of instruments that Bell has helped develop. The
instrument's primary calibration target, which doubles as a sundial for
educational purposes, includes color and grayscale swatches. These help
scientists ensure the cameras' color settings are correct, given that the
position of the Sun and the dustiness of the sky can affect the lighting in
images.
Spirit and Opportunity carried similar sundials, which bore
the motto "Two Worlds, One Sun," while Curiosity's sundial reads,
"To Mars to Explore." Mastcam-Z's sundial motto is "Two Worlds,
One Beginning," referring to the idea of Earth and the Red Planet growing
out of the same proto-stellar dust.
Besides the motto and swatches, the sundial displays small
line drawings of early life forms on Earth, including cyanobacteria, a fern and
a dinosaur. There's also a man and woman similar to those on the Pioneer
plaques and the Golden Record. It's all in tribute to Perseverance's astrobiology mission, searching for
signs of ancient microbial life on the planet's surface.
Just out of view, on the outer edge of the calibration
target, there's a bonus inscription: "Are we alone? We came here to look for signs of life, and to collect
samples of Mars for study on Earth. To those who follow, we wish a safe journey
and the joy of discovery." Surrounding the message is the phrase
"Joy of Discovery" in a variety of languages.
Finding SHERLOC
The calibration target for SHERLOC, one of the instruments aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover, features a slice of Martian meteorite, plus spacesuit materials, including helmet-visor material that doubles as a geocache target. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption
To the millions of people who geocache, using their
smartphone GPS to hunt for objects hidden by fellow enthusiasts, satisfaction
goes hand in hand with finding the most remote geocaches. Now there's one
geocache more remote than any other: a special coin aboard Perseverance. Made
of helmet-visor material and inscribed with the address of the instrument's fictional
detective namesake, it's part of the calibration target for SHERLOC
(Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman &
Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals), an instrument on the end of
Perseverance's 7-foot-long (3-meter-long) robotic arm.
SHERLOC is partnered with a camera worthy of its namesake
detective: WATSON (the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and
eNgineering). Whenever WATSON takes a
picture of the target, geocaching fans can go looking for the images as they
show up in Perseverance's image gallery at mars.nasa.gov.
SHERLOC's calibration target is packed with other goodies,
too. In order to fine-tune the instrument's settings, scientists added a slice
of Martian
meteorite. Along with the visor
material, four other samples of spacesuit materials
also reside on the target so that NASA can observe how they hold up on the
irradiated, dusty Martian surface.
SuperCam's Mars
Meteorite
This fragment of a Martian meteorite, seen floating inside the International Space Station, is is now part of a calibration target for SuperCam, one of the instruments aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech /LANL/CNES/ESA/Thomas Pesquet
› Full image and caption
As rock collectors, geologists lean toward their favorite
subject for festooning. That's why the scientists who built SuperCam
selected their own slice of Martian meteorite. SuperCam is a laser instrument
that zaps rocks and "soil," then measures the resulting vapor to
determine their composition. This particular piece of rock on SuperCam made a
roundtrip voyage to the International Space Station before scientists added it
to Perseverance.
The
parts of SuperCam on Perseverance's mast, or "head," were provided by
Centre National d'Etudes Spatiales, the French space agency, along with the meteorite.
Almost 11 Million
Names
A placard on the Perseverance Mars rover commemorates NASA's 'Send Your Name to Mars' campaign. Three small chips affixed to the upper-left corner of the placard feature the names of 10,932,295 people who participated, along with the essays of the 155 finalists in NASA's 'Name the Rover' contest. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption
Since the days of Spirit and Opportunity, JPL has been providing
people around the world a chance to "fly" to Mars by sending their
names there. Microchips stenciled with names submitted by the public have been
carried by all of NASA's landed Mars missions going back to Pathfinder in 1997.
Curiosity, the last rover to touch down on Mars, carries a microchip
with 1.2 million names. Perseverance beat that, carrying three small chips
stenciled with 10.9
million names. Those chips even bear the 155 finalist essays submitted for
Perseverance's "Name
the Rover" contest.
Visible to the cameras on the rover's mast, the chips share
space on a metal plate located at the center of Perseverance's aft crossbeam
and adorned with a laser-etched graphic depicting Earth and Mars joined by the
star that gives light to both. The phrase "Explore as one," written
in Morse code in the Sun's rays, connects the two. But the simple illustration
also connects this mission with the Pioneer and Voyager spacecraft and their
festooning.
A COVID Memorial on
Mars
Members of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission installed a plate on the left side of the rover chassis, commemorating the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and paying tribute to the perseverance of healthcare workers around the world. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
› Full image and caption
The year 2020 will be remembered for the novel coronavirus
pandemic. Engineers managed to stay on course to complete building and testing Perseverance
in clean rooms in California and Florida while observing pandemic-related
safety precautions. The rover team wanted to recognize the challenges faced by
the global community and honor the many healthcare workers who have risked
their lives to help those affected by the pandemic. A special
aluminum plate on the rover's left side bears an image of planet Earth
supported by the Rod of Asclepius,
an ancient Greek symbol displaying a snake-entwined rod to symbolize healing
and medicine.
More About the Mission
A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology,
including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will
characterize the planet's geology and past climate, pave the way for human
exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache
Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).
Subsequent missions, currently under consideration by NASA
in cooperation with the European Space Agency, would send spacecraft to Mars to
collect these cached samples from the surface and return them to Earth for
in-depth analysis.
The Mars 2020 mission is part of a larger program that
includes missions to the Moon as a way to prepare for human exploration of the
Red Planet. Charged with returning astronauts to the Moon by 2024, NASA will
establish a sustained human presence on and around the Moon by 2028 through
NASA's Artemis lunar
exploration plans.
JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena,
California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.
For more about Perseverance:
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
nasa.gov/perseverance
|
